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News Bits: 2/17/11 Edition

Ahhhh! Too many dramas to catch up on!! And with Queen of Reversals on DramaFever, I really shouldn’t have an excuse to put it off any longer!! I cannot promise I will do any more recaps, but I promise a review. Honestly, the things that happen piss me off SO MUCH. It’s not bad writing (quite the contrary) or the bad acting (again, quite the contrary). It’s just, it’s so maddening but good and makes me feel too exhausted to do a rewatch so I can recap it.

Kim Sun Ah and Kim Joo Hyuk will star in the upcoming film “Fighting Spirit” (working title). She will play the wife of a pitcher named Yoon Doo Hoon, and supports her husband and two children. The film will start production in February and premiere next year.

Though it’s a little late, Queen Seondeok is facing charges of plagiarism. The Seoul National University Center for Law and Technology confirmed that the drama plagiarized from a musical called “Queen of Mugunghwa, Seondeok,” which was written back in 2005. (The drama aired in 2009.) The University Center’s confirmation will be used as evidence in the lawsuit that the playwright brought against the two screenwriters. Apparently, the similar parts are the rivalry between Seondeok and Mishil, her “romance” with General Kim Yu Shin, and Seondeok wandering through a desert when young. I don’t know much about Korean history, but I have a feeling the desert part was more fictional than fact, and so to have that element in the drama as well points more significantly towards plagiarism.

Poor Hyun Bin – while his film “Late Autumn” with Tang Wei is getting lots of good press, his other film “Come Rain, Come Shine” got booed at the Berlin Film Festival. The film is about a woman who is about to leave her husband and spends one last day with him at home. It’s a very slow film with little dialogue and meant to be more atmospherically sad. However, it got a bad response from the critics. Hyun Bin stated, “We need slow moving films that go deep into the emotions of their characters.” Yeah ok – but I don’t really wanna fall asleep while trying to “understand the characters.” The film is one of the contenders for the Golden Bear top prize.

I can’t believe this happened: a Japanese novel about a female manager of a high school baseball team SURPASSED Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in sales in Japan. It was published in December 2009 and through word of mouth, became the top-selling book of 2010. It’s total sales is just 2,000 more books than Harry Potter. Travesty!! But the book is so popular it has a manga adaptation, will have an anime adaptation in March, and a live-action adaptation in June. HARRYYYYY! NOOOOO!

After Schoolwill be collaborating with Amuro Namie in the Japanese singer’s upcoming album. The song is called “Make It Happen” and will be released on March 23. They are apparently the only K-pop artist that collaborated with her for this album, as the album also includes CHEMISTRY, AI, Tsuchiya Anna, and Yamashita Tomohisa (Yamapi). Below is a teaser of the MV:

Park Min Youngmay just join Lee Min Ho in his upcoming drama City Hunter. According to her agency, she is looking into the drama in a “positive light” and may play Lee Min Ho’s female sidekick/love interest. This comes after news that Hwang Eun Kyung (the scriptwriter ousted from Daemul) will be the writer for the drama, and Jin Hyuk (who directed Shining Inheritance and Prosecutor Princess) will be the director. And I go – whaaaat? Why isn’t Jin Hyuk teaming up for 49 Days?! The writer-director team! The writer-director team!

Wow – I heard Eunjung was an actress in that she dabbled with some roles before T-ara, but I never found real proof of it. Now photos of her in the movie “Dating on Earth” and her cameo in Goong have shown up. In Goong she was a ballet student alongside Song Ji Hyo. The photos can be seen here. I think she looked a little plainer, a little plumper then, and definitely fixed her teeth.